"[A]s well as seriously – indeed exhaustively – researching everything that could conceivably go wrong, I think we should also investigate what could go right. The world is racked by suffering. The hedonic treadmill might more aptly be called a dolorous treadmill. Hundreds of millions of people are currently depressed, pain-ridden or both. Hundreds of billions of non-human animals are suffering too. If we weren't so inured to a world of pain and misery, then the biosphere would be reckoned in the throes of a global medical emergency. Thanks to breakthroughs in biotechnology, pain-thresholds, default anxiety levels, hedonic range and hedonic set-points are all now adjustable parameters in human and non-human animals alike. We are living in the final century of life on Earth in which suffering is biologically inevitable. As a society, we need an ethical debate about how much pain and misery we want to preserve and create."
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Essayists from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandActivists from the United KingdomTranshumanistsUtilitarians
Original Language: English
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How do you break the hedonic treadmill?", Quora, 6 Apr. 2019
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Pearce_(philosopher)
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David Pearce (philosopher)
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